Co-operative Group launches £500k social enterprise fund

The Co-operative Group has launched a scheme to help kick-start social enterprises.

The Co-operative Group has launched a scheme to help kick-start social enterprises.

The Manchester-based mutual has set up a £500,000 fund which will see it underwrite community share issues of up to £50,000.

The Community Share Fund has been developed to help projects that are struggling to get off the ground because of problems raising finance.

The mutual will underwrite the shares so that local people will have the confidence to invest in a new co-operative enterprise.

If the entrepreneurs fail to raise the total amount, the Co-op will buy an equity stake and sell back its shares once the venture has become a success.

Additionally, if someone wants to buy a share but does not have the funds to invest immediately, they can apply for a Co-op loan and pay it back over time.

Meanwhile, the Co-op has also pledged to allocate a further £5m over the next two years to its Enterprise Hub, a nationwide advice and training service for new and existing co-operatives. So far, the Co-op has invested £6m and helped 1,000 mutuals.

* The Co-operative Enterprise Hub will hold its annual conference at Manchester Central next week. It will give delegates the chance to explore co-operative entrepreneurship and the development of co-operative business.

Our newspapers include the flagship Manchester Evening News - Britain's largest circulating
regional daily with up to 130,485 copies - as well as 20 local weekly titles across Greater
Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire.

Free morning newspaper, The Metro, published every weekday, is also part of our portfolio,
delivering more than 200,000 readers in Greater Manchester.

Greater Manchester Business Week is the region’s number one provider of business news andfeatures, targeting a bespoke business audience with 12,687 copies every Thursday.

Every month, M.E.N. Media’s print products reach 2.2 million adults, spanning from Accrington
in the north to Macclesfield in the south.